


Demon Luigi and the Case of the Missing Vampire

by touchstoneaf



Series: Souls In Bondage [5]
Category: Angel: The Series (Comics), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Angst, Don't copy to another site, F/M, POV, Read at Your Own Risk, You Have Been Warned, covid insanity, it might be catching, no beta we die like men, not kidding though, scif-fi weirdness, seriously don't ask, this will barely make sense to the initiated, time-travel, writing fics while awake for too long
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:47:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24098326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/touchstoneaf/pseuds/touchstoneaf
Summary: Some demons aren't in our dimension to start trouble.Some demons just wanna do a job.Heck.  Some demons just want to get out of their home dimension, because they're teeming with others of their own kind, they're crowded, they're boring, life is monotonous.Any job will do.  Even plumbing a dying city in the human world.But then... Dreams get in the way.  An out-of-practice Morpheus demon just trying to make an honest buck can easily get sucked into the desperate, guilty REM-sleep of a Slayer who's just tragically lost her lover in the ending of the world a month or two ago.  At which point, things tend to spin rapidly out of control.  Because tinkering with mortal dreams?Definitely not in the work-contract.NOTE:This is tangentially part of the"Souls In Bondage" series,was originally written as a gift for one of my EF readers,and will literally make ZERO sense if you haven't read "LA Is the Hell You Make It".
Relationships: Spike/Buffy Summers
Series: Souls In Bondage [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1422868
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	Demon Luigi and the Case of the Missing Vampire

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, this one's a gift for a reader who _really_ wanted to know how the plumbing worked in Hell-A. So... don't read it at all if you didn't read **"LA Is the Hell You Make It",** or it definitely won't make the slightest bit of sense. 
> 
> Heck; it probably won't anyway. It's weird as... well, hell. LOL, I have no idea. I was fighting insomnia when I wrote it. Call it some kind of bizarre Spuffy-ish backstory to the dreams that sent Buffy to Florence/LA just in time to land in NFA. 
> 
> Read at your own risk. This one's just ???
> 
>  **Formatting Note:** For anyone who’s brave enough to start reading me here (don't do it! Start with the beginning of the series, I beg you!!! I mean, ahem, do you) I do a weird thing. Or, at least, it’s weird nowadays. I use a couple of old fanfic conventions from long ago because I'm ancient, and we didn't used to have access to italics in the days when I used to fic. Can't break the habit now, I'm just too old and it looks weird for me without it. Character thoughts look like this in my stories: /Blah blah blah./ Conversely, telepathic communication is indicated thusly: --Hi! I'm telepathically communicating with you!-- This being a way to set said communication off as different from /Thoughts/, or past event italics. 
> 
> **Disclaimer:** All previously-extant characters property of Joss Whedon, damn his brilliant, confusing soul. And Mutant Enemy. And apparently some people at, I guess, Fox, now? (Who can even keep track anymore. I’m still half-stuck in the WB/CW/UPN confusion.) All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners, yadda and blah. The OCs are MINE, ALL MINE! I am in no way associated with Joss, Mutant Enemy, UPN, Fox, or any other media franchise. I intend no infringement. I intend sexy shenanigans and JUSTICE FOR SPUFFY!
> 
>  **Pairing(s):** Um, Spuffy. Always Spuffy. Though... this one is a random, tangential, and bizarre way to come at that, and you have been warned a lot of ways already.
> 
>  **Rating:** G, because this is a weird POV way to get them to get back together, and don't even ask.
> 
>  **Author’s Note / Dedication:** This one's for Magnus, for always being awesome, and specifically for inspiring this one with his myriad questions about exactly how the plumbing is working in Hell-A when it's been uprooted to another dimension, while I continually insisted that the toilets still worked, LOL.  
> I HAD MY REASONS, OKAY, MAGNUS?  
> I just didn't know they involved a demon who walked the dreamscape like freaking Luigi on shrooms. Till... now. But... you were right. The more I thought about it, the more I was like... ok, we need a plumber in the system. Then this guy showed up and started working. Then he got involved in the dreams. And then... this happened. So this random (kind of scifi?) weirdness is really all your fault.

**Contract:**

The Engineer honestly could not quite credit their luck. After so long perusing the board, to find this gem?

Sure, it was no shining glory that would be ascribed in the Book of Ages (no Knossus or Ek’Lat-Trek), but it was _work_. Steady work. 

It would be a routine job, and a lasting one. The Engineer would get to use their specialty… At least, the one they ascribed to on paper. It wasn’t their art, of course, but who ever got to perform their art as a vocation?

Not only was it work, it would get them out of their home dimension. 

That was the big attraction. 

They signed up for the job without pause. Ticked off the box that said they agreed to an ‘indefinite posting’. Signed away all rights to return. Hell knew they didn’t want to come back anyway. No one wanted to. It was so damned crowded here. No room to move. ‘Indefinite’ sounded just… swell. The conditions didn’t matter, as long as they had access to personal space. 

They checked off the box that said ‘solo task’ without qualm. Loneliness, too, sounded a lovely treat after so long incarcerated in their home dimension. After millennia spent rubbing elbows with their fellows, a little loneliness would do them good. 

They had to admit that the last box gave them pause. ‘Existence tied to dimension’ was a little questionable, but they supposed that was just The Employer’s way of keeping the employees invested. You did the work to maintain the environment, or the environment failed… and so did you. It winked out of existence, you went with it. 

Best to keep the nose to the grindstone.

The Engineer checked that box too. There were, after all, approximately seven hundred thousand other engineers breathing down their neck, hoping to get a ticket out. The job board was full of crap choices. You didn’t run across a cherry job like this every century. THE THEM knew they had been waiting for the last eon for another shot at one, since Two-Six-Five had pulled the Indus Valley job out from under their very fingertips. Damn Two-Six-Five’s ceramics-inclined mind.

Tearing the signed form from the board, the Engineer turned away to fight through the crowds. Next move would be to bring the signed document to onboarding. The quicker they could get the posting registered, the quicker they could get the hell out of here and get on site.

As they shuffled away through the crowd, retracting every limb and extrusion to avoid contact, they felt the glares from those less fortunate. The hate wafted over their body. The Engineer shelled up, carapace hardening. One must not permit envy to penetrate one’s empathy, or one might dream it.

Dreaming others’ emotions interfered with productivity and clear thought.

The Engineer made it to the assignment grid without mishap, turned over their chit. 

\--Extradimensional?-- 

Assignments sounded surprised.

\--Yes.-- Best not to appear too elated.

Assignments examined the job particulars in astonishment. --Time as well. Solo. Indefinite? THEM take you, you lucky bastard.--

\--Right place, right moment.-- 

\--I guess. Alright. Pad one-two-one. Gear up and step up in…-- Assignments checked the chronosphere. --Fourteen solaris. Time to grab a few things.--

The Engineer practically vibrated while the chit was slowly stamped. Separated. Dropped into the slot. And the copy was passed to them through the slot. Everyone was breathing all around them, every inhalation envy, every exhale hatred.

Their orders were finally in their hands. --I don’t need much.--

The Engineer bolted.

Within ten solaris they were back, standing on the pad with only a few odds and ends. The effects of a long life spent living small and avoiding interaction. /And now I get to make that official./ 

The thought excited the Engineer past all imagining.

\--Time standard set,-- Travel Manager One called.

\--Location standard, set,--Travel Manager Two answered. They both sounded insanely bored in their too-close perches over the controls.

The Engineer vibrated with willingness to be gone.

\--Locked in,-- Travel Manager One announced.

\--Initiate,-- the other answered.

The haze descended. The magicks flooded the Engineer’s mind. The last thing they saw, drawing backward into the tunnel of time and space, was the vanishing perspective of the teeming mass of their home dimension, roiling with the unsatisfied, unstationed ones.

/But I’m free of it,/ they thought. /THEY won’t be sorry./

/I’m gonna do a damn good job./

***

**Impact:**

The routine was an easy one, in that new time and place. Repair, rebuild the damage caused by moving an entire city, or most of it, to a new location. Or, rather… that didn’t seem entirely accurate. It was more as if part of a larger city had been violently cored out of the whole and transported over to replace the same segment in another time-stream. Which provided a rather intriguing and unique set of challenges, since the materials and infrastructure available in the newer portion were in relatively decent shape, whilst the ones in the older portion matched up to them directly, but were worn, broken, dusty, damaged, filled with sand and debris, and just generally a disaster. Linking up the system was something of a fascinating puzzle.

Their instructions had been very specific, of course. Connect the disposal system first, and cause it to remove waste. Work outward from the areas of highest density, in a spiral from northwest to southwest and around to north again. Well and good. Easily done. 

Secondary to this was to reconnect the city to what remained of the ancient aquifer. This primordial sponge, once a repository of clean water between layers of bedrock, was now a sort of sludgy mire, contaminated with what appeared to be sulfur and methane, even some odd overabundance of unnatural chlorine. 

/The world turns and times change./ Whatever world this was. The Engineer had no clue, honestly, and hadn’t bothered asking. It wasn’t their lookout; which world, which time period, any of it. There was a job to do here and they would do it. It was nice enough of the Employer to hand out a few magickal tools to assist in the work. It made things a little faster. Wasn’t like this sort of Employer to make things easier on an employee, but it stood to reason. It appeared that the Employer only wanted one employee here for some undisclosed reason, but needed the job done fast; hence the help. The Engineer assumed the reason behind that sort of consideration was that if another engineer had been sent, they two might start comparing notes.

Employers like these didn’t much like it when you compared notes or did too much thinking. These Employers had outsourced for a very specific reason, seeking the best and the hungriest.

Hungry employees desperate for work tended not to ask questions.

The Engineer followed that expectation to a tee for the first several weeks. They ignored some of the stranger notes to the experience—the vast migration out of the tunnels directly upon their arrival by a thunderous hoard of exalted creatures of all stripes, from dozens of dimensions and pedigrees… and an odd, hollow, drum-like thunder from one location at the dense central system and moving outward, toward the west and a bit north—and attempted to turn off their empathy when conflicted by the emotions going on above. There was suffering commencing in the city, at the surface. A very great deal of it. 

/Not my business. Here to do a job. Connect the system. Create pressure. Keep pressure. Investigate losses in pressure. Resume pressure. Maintain the system. Walk the system. Use the sparse tools given. Take no note of things not in your purview. You are here indefinitely. It is infinitely better than home./ Wide strides were in order here. Broad breaths. No one touching one’s limbs, one’s extrusions. No need to shell or wear a carapace except for protection from a damaging surface. 

Freeing, that.

And no impinging thoughts or emotions. Peace… if one could tune out the faint hints of agony drifting down from above.

The sweltering heat didn’t matter to the Engineer. It was not a heat they had to share with anyone. No other bodies close to hand meant no heat was too much to bear. There was only the work, and the blessed solitude.

That was, until one of the connections, from old to new, crumbled like stucco falling to dust. 

/PLOR! Just how old is this hellcity, anyway?/

Cursing, the Engineer stepped back from the most recent failed segment and recalibrated the setting on the magicks. Fired them again, hoping against hope for a solid seal. 

The older section merely collapsed further, leaving behind a gap over two _gek_ in width.

/PLOR, I could fit half my body through that!/

What solution could there be? Scavenge, obviously. Lift a segment from some unused connection, bring it here to shore up this one. Except… /I’m using them all already./ 

Scavenge a connection from the older parts of the city? Find some dusty old relic of tunnel piping and somehow extricate it and reset it without it crumbling?

Unlikely, even if he could find one in good enough shape to begin with. And that would be difficult in the extreme in the first place. /At best, if I were to date this place, I’d say…/

No. Better not to speculate. The Employers wouldn’t like it. Hundreds, maybe thousands of years old was sufficient. 

In summary, less than useful.

/Maybe if I travel back to the city’s past and find more parts from then…/

Rummaging in their pack where it remained always nearby, the Engineer scanned their contract. And, PLOR. There it was, plain as thought. ‘No travel to past or future iterations of the manifestation’. 

Well, that ruled out that solution.

The Engineer pondered the problem all throughout the ending meal, and again through the beginning meal, but found no fix. The connection remained a gaping wound in their otherwise perfect system; a blot on their otherwise perfect service record. It was intolerable; a splinter digging in the softness beneath the carapace, a nagging thought that would not leave the mind. 

Until it occurred to them sometime halfway through a day spent fruitlessly picking over make-work in other parts of the network… /I have other talents. Perhaps I can employ them./

Pulling out the contract once more, the Engineer checked the verbiage of the long, complex document. Checked it again. It wouldn’t do to cross the Employers. They had been known to be sticklers. They were something called ‘lawyers’, which was a dimension-local term for venal, exacting, and deadly.

/Hm./ Wouldn’t you know. The ‘lawyers’ had forgotten to mention a clause. The contract said nothing about travel to past or future iterations of any other nearby manifestation.

It was fudging things a bit, certainly, but it was the Engineer’s only hope of locating a likely fitting. If they were lucky, nearby cities might have used similar-sized equipment in their networks. Granted, they would have to travel to the time-period from which this segment of city had been transported in order to ensure receipt of a segment in good working order, since they knew nothing of this world and its timeline. For all the Engineer knew, these cities all collapsed the following morning, or were struck with a massive worldwide apocalypse, or were covered in lava, or sandstorms, or nuclear fusion. No way to be sure why this section of a city had been transported into its future with all its denizens. /Not that it seems to be serving them at all well./ 

Well. Traveling to another time without the controls afforded by the machinery of home was a daunting prospect. The tool given them by the Employer would balk unless they got it all exactly right. It was a will-be-done tool, though, and should suffice as long as it was sufficiently directed. The matter then became obtaining specific directions. 

This of course meant seeking out some minds above. It was a thing the Engineer had been avoiding with all constancy since their arrival. But this was an emergency. The job was at stake. More specifically, job performance.

Traveling to the surface was an odd experience. The Engineer had never been to any surface. It was exceedingly bright on a world-crust. The star of this one rode in tandem with its lunar companion. Both sat high in the atmospheric envelope, which appeared to be filled with the remains of some past ejecta, coloring the umbra a predominately russet hue with patches of sickly ocher. The material filtered the UV rays and other spectra from the star, causing the light which reached the surface to be a truncated wavelength which, gratefully, did not damage the subterranean Engineer’s ocular equipment too badly. 

The openness was daunting.

Most of the creatures passing by, at first, were native to the current city. It took only the swiftest of dips into their minds to locate this information. Some few were not, but those had past lives in other dimensions, which did not in any way aid the Engineer in their task. As time passed out in the broad, unroofed surface, they began to quail, and to despair of finding an appropriate memory. They were about to duck below once more, seeking some other solution, when the approach of some denizen set the entirety of the nearby city to trembling. 

The Engineer clung to the ladder, head out of the very small aperture, and stared, expecting some behemoth. Instead, they beheld a very small being; four limbs, no especial armor, no particularly dangerous appendages. It appeared quite similar in fact to the most frightened of the prey beings they had sampled, scurrying about the city in the last few chronos. 

This one, though, carried no fear. It walked in self-assurance. And the entire pocket-dimension trembled with its presence. 

Interest captured, the Engineer dipped into the deceptively majestic creature’s head.

Sifting the memories therein was a roil. On the surface, memories of this city, before it had been transported. Beneath them, recent recollections of hunting here, some companion at her side, trusted above all others. A mate. Other memories then. Another city. Night. No star, only a lunar orb, and many smaller and more distant stars. Darkness. This one, and the mate; a vivid picture. Smells, sounds, tastes, touch. A full bouquet for an address. Hunting again. The sun rising. The mate, hastening away. An odd sense of guilt, watching. And, oh! The mate was opening a grate; was descending to…

Tunnels!

/Excellent./

The Engineer made to move; to retreat. But then the memories altered, to a swell of such agony that they were unable to shift a single cell. Tunnels, opening into a vast cavern. The mate, standing near an exit. Sunlight, viciously bright, pouring down. Sunlight also, pouring from inside the mate’s central torso. 

Anguish.

The world, falling in.

The memory cut off, but it was enough. That city, too, was no more. /I will have to go back to before. Before it collapsed. How this mate had to do with the collapse of an entire city is…/

The thought was cut off by a wash of such gratitude and joy that it damn near knocked the Engineer backward in the small opening. It felt like a familiar emotion, but never one to be taken for granted. And the mate—it was very recognizably the mate—was striding to the small one’s side. 

The ground did not shake for this one, but it was equally self-assured. The larger biped did not stop or slow as they neared one another; in fact, the smaller one broke into a run, and, startlingly, they slammed into one another full-bodied. The meeting was punctuated by their sealing their facial orifices together, with loud exclamations of relief, their appendages grasping. And a vast swell of emotion radiated outward, so powerful that it knocked the Engineer off the ladder.

They fell down, three _gek_ to the filth-encrusted floor of the tunnel. But it did not matter. /I have my coordinates. And noted; do not enter the minds of those bipeds, ever again./ 

No one ever needed to feel that much unadulterated emotional excess. It was simply…

Well. Excessive.

***

**Connection:**

The tool brought them directly to the unauthorized time and place without difficulty, and with little exertion of will. Once arrived, they set to work immediately, extricating the required segment of tunnel connection from an area adjacent to the large cavern. After all, the small city would shortly not need such items. From what the Engineer understood of the memories they had extricated from the bipeds, the entirety of the small polity would soon collapse into the caverns riddling its foundation.

Upon exiting the tunnels for said caverns, the Engineer was quick to understand precisely why this subsidence occurred. The damned town was built atop a dimensional portal. What idiocy!

It was a hell of a one as well, judging from the emanations. They impinged on the Engineer’s perceptions like a heavy, smothering blankets being cast in repeated waves; blankets filled with sharp, cutting spikes of energy. It made them jittery, anxious, filled them with the urge to take action, to leap forward… Certainly the Engineer felt quite capable of carrying the segment of tunnel from this place single-handed and without difficulty. /Foolishness./ But there it was.

Portals like these were many. This, though, was one of the strongest they had ever encountered. And its emanations did not lean toward Chaos. They were quite definitively canted in the direction of Evil. 

Regrettable. Such energy would be much more constructive if it lent itself to other means.

Well. Needs be. Best to attempt to piggyback on the charge to return to the appointed task with one’s heavy load, while remaining mindful that such emanations tended to wreak mischief with spellwork. The Engineer would have to keep careful focus on the tool to ensure a return to the proper time and place with the requisite segment of tunnel intact.

They exited the last round of the vast network, found themselves in a fathomless cavern, like the mouth of the world. The yawning gulf below their feet went on, past the current ledge, seemingly to the core of the planet. Up every rough side scrambled and crawled tens of thousands of prehistoric bipeds the Engineer now recognized, very belatedly, as the blood-drinking species. /Oh. Now I know which world I’m on!/ 

The goal of these hordes was some fifteen or so _gek_ above them; a wide, semicircular ledge near a sunlit exit. The swarm was obtaining the place at an alarming rate, overtaking it. A small band of bipeds who registered much like the one from the Engineer’s city were dancing amidst the mindless, slavering beasts, dealing death to their starved, weakened forms before they could escape out into the wider world. Every one of these females were possessed of great power. Some more than others; enough that it could be seen on them, in emanations. 

There was a male, as well. He was not like the rest. He was…

He was also a blood-drinker, if not one of the primitives. And… 

/No!/ The Engineer was not good with bipeds, but was that the same one they had seen back in the other city?

If so, this lot had been moved across a great deal of space and time, and very shortly. 

The fighters were passing between them some weapon which emanated enormous power. It sliced through the primitives as if they were invertebrates, knocked them off of the ledge in droves. The male was fighting right in amongst them; always near… Ah, yes. The one with the most powerful emanations. There, rising from the ground. Wounded, but still strong, and bolstered by the weapon in her hand. Only one other of the rest nearly matched her emanations, but just nearly.

Inevitably the tide turned and the swarm began to overtake them. /How am I meant to get past all of this to remove what is needful?/ Perhaps they ought simply to retreat down the tunnels once more, attempt the transfer near but not within the center of power. 

Too close would be to draw attention, perhaps bring some of the primitives down on one. Too far, and none of the emanations would be strong enough to be of any use.

It was a conundrum.

Perhaps the battle would spend itself shortly. In any case, curiosity was winning out. /How will those two bipeds live to see the other city, if they are about to expire in this cavern? They are very fragile creatures, after all./

Turning back to see the finish, the Engineer found themselves in view just in time to witness the mate of the most powerful female reeling backward, clutching at its thorax and stumbling on the odd bipedal arrangement of its legs—such a precarious choice of limb-placement, they had always thought—to slam against the cavern wall. And then light began pouring out of some bauble the creature wore dangling below its head, from the throat and centered at mid-thorax.

The light shot upward at an alarming rate, at a blue-spectrum so high-frequency that it was almost white. It pierced the stone overhead, bringing in sunlight. Then, as if that light had altered the frequency of the beam, the thing on the male’s thorax altered spectrum to yellow-orange.

/It’s absorbing the power of the planetary primary and bringing it within the cavern. Fascinating./

The male called out to his mate. Swinging around, the powerful female stared, arrested mid-battle, and responded in kind, sounding anxious. Some of the others stared as well, and not a few of the swarming, bestial blood-drinkers. The one wearing the bauble stared down at itself, appearing shocked.

The light abruptly fractured outward, as if breaking on facets, or focused with laser-precision. And each ray shot out with vivid intensity, every one rivaling that which shone down from the outside, to tear viciously thorough the primitives surrounding the embattled.

/Well. That’s a neat trick/ the Engineer allowed.

Everywhere around them, the swarm was falling back. The primitives began to fail; to cower and to explode into dust all around the females, in their thousands. Above, below, beside; all around. The flames spread, seeking; all the way down, even unto the mouth of the portal itself.

As if answering the intrusion, the cavern rumbled. A tremor ran through the open space, echoed in every tunnel. The Engineer felt the protestations of the uneasy earth beneath their feet and knew the portal was angry at the invasion of this unwonted power; a star, brought to the depths.

/I’ve come too late. This is the ending. I must depart, now, or I will fall with my prize./

“Everybody out!” the next-most powerful one shrieked. 

The females began to evacuate.

Best to follow suit. The Engineer drew out their tool and began the chant. Fought for focus. There must needs be focus, in order to return properly, to the right time and place. 

Above, the light continued to pour from the creature wearing the bauble. It was most distracting, swelling from him; from within him to light the cavern as bright as if they were out on the surface, shining upon his powerful mate as if he had brought down their primary and set it up within this small space. 

The power of their sun was being internalized. It made no sense unless…

/Oh. The blood-drinker has its original soul fully intact and in the fore, acting as conduit. How very odd./

In any case, the battle was won. Why did the creature continue to wear the bauble? Why did he not remove it? Was it linked to the soul’s fire? Could it not be removed once activated?

It really ought to. It was importing literal sunlight. And the creature was a blood-drinker as well, if more modern. This, then, would be lethal. It must desist.

The realization of this truth was causing the powerful one enough anguish that it was bleeding through the Engineer’s control… and, PLOR; this was the moment that had caused the devastation which had so blasted them in the other city, was it not?

How in the name of the THEM were they supposed to concentrate when all that raw emotion was bleeding through, new and unencumbered?

The male was pushing her away, while she waited, tried to cling, to convince him to leave the bauble behind, leave with her. His emotions…

He seemed resigned. As if this was an act required of him in penance for some great crime, or to show his worth. Did he not know, his mate feared only his loss?

The anguish and dread lashed the cavern. 

Their appendages clasped, burst into flame.

A dam broke. There were words the female had feared to say for many years, because to say them was to invoke loss. But the loss had already been invoked. Saying them now cost nothing. And they were true nonetheless. They rang with sincerity.

The male denied them. They were insane, they were a sop, they were impossibly late, they couldn’t be true, or he was breaking the only vow he had ever made and still held true. They mustn’t be.

Something broke in the female. They parted. 

The temblors were getting much worse. The male was urging the female away. The Engineer had no idea whatsoever how they both were to end up in the latter timestream… but no time to ponder that now. This portal was about to close with them in it; them, and a blood-drinker about to turn to ashes.

Ripping their focus back to the needs of the moment, the Engineer brought the tool into line with their will. They would return to the place where work might commence, the necessary item in tow. It was connected by touch. That was all that was needed. Expediency had been communicated. The requisite focus was maintained, and the energies of the portal had been filtered out, surely. No issues could be detected.

“Now go!”

The engineer invoked amidst a pervasive cloud of confused, torn and anguished regret and a strange, wild, insane urge toward self-negation that sought a numb emptiness they did not understand at all.

When they came out the other side, in the familiar tunnels of the city where their task lay, segment of tunnel in tow, the strange empathy lingered. 

/Well. One doesn’t ask for that sort of adventure when one goes off-contract./ 

/Of course, maybe that’s why we’re counseled not to step off-contract in the first-place./

Not that it mattered anymore. It had been a brief foray into uncontracted insanity, done in the name of the employment. It was over. The Engineer would be focusing on nothing but the job from here on out, to be sure.

***

**Compact:**

The first visitation occurred promptly during the next rest-period. The Engineer was torn from the deepest portion of the rest-cycle by a wild, keening, aching emptiness; an extreme of loss such as they had never previously encompassed. It dragged them, as a positive charge to a negative, from one sleep-cycle into another… for that was what happened when one was connected to another’s empathic bonds. 

Perhaps the Engineer had simply been outside the Home for too long. It might explain the susceptibility to a connection which, otherwise, made little to no sense when it had been made only in the briefest of touches… and with an entirely alien species.

But there it was. And here they were. Trapped within another being’s psyche. This was not an unusual state in and of itself. Morpheus demons often spent large proportions of their time dreamlocked; though of course not by choice. Not in the Home, when personal space was at such an impossible premium. One preferred to avoid any further closeness, if at all possible. The problem being… it simply wasn’t, when every member of your species was empathic. Without conscious control, one tended to fall into another’s dreams, to be captured by another’s emotions. 

Which was precisely what had occurred in this instance, of course… only, who would have thought it could happen with a biped? Their brains were so damnably small, so hung up on physical minutiae!

This one was a morass of conflicting emotion, all of it bathed in anguish. It was almost more than the Engineer could bear. It explained, of course, the ease with which they had been pulled in. For the empathic mind, if there was any sort of connection, that level of emoting…

/And I’m out of phase with the Home. This one is both physically closer and, possibly, closer in the time-stream./ One never knew. Temporal mechanics were all very confusing to the Engineer. Their specialty was in physical-spatial relationships, not theoretical-temporal ones. 

/Perhaps if I soothe this one’s pain, it will release me, and I might return to my rest and my duties./ 

It was a daunting concept, reaching even further into the sinkhole of agony that was this creature’s mind, but it was either that or remain entrammeled in the mire. Thus the Engineer began.

Sinking deeper, the first thing they encountered was a sense of overarching regret so vast that it encompassed all. It ached and bloomed, receded and rebounded like a living, breathing thing, threatening to swamp the poor being’s mind and soul. Beneath that lay a vicious jags of guilt, which, circling around to regret, struck that waxing and waning, found exhaustion, and dropped again before surging once more on some trigger-point. 

/This one cannot rest. It rehearses old wounds, over and over; some self-inflicted, some inflicted by another, some inflicted upon another. None of them have been set right, or can be./

Beneath that, and pervading all, there was the reason that these things could not be solved; the reason for the continual resurgence of pain. A sense of being adrift, without function or identity, and with no touchstone to reality or sense of self. Images of a place now gone. The Engineer recognized it as the one which had fallen into the earth. Places of interment of the deceased, in the darkness of night. Underground walks in the tunnels. Many battles; some quite fierce and challenging.

And a person. Well, there were several beings, in brief flashes; more sensation than picture… but there was one in particular which stood out, and that in sharp relief, carved bright with the fierce torment of loss. And it was everywhere. That same face. 

The mate. Each flash of that one was limned with agony; even the memories tinged also with brief touches of joy, of laughter, of beauty. They all carried pain, or regret, or sorrow. 

The face fell away. The anguish swelled, along with that massive sense of bereavement… and the Engineer knew. The place and the person were deeply intertwined. Without the two, this one was lost; had no node of central identification, no lodestone to their being.

The Engineer was not capable of conceptualizing this attachment of identity to place and person. They had always known what and who they were. Their identity was firmly based in a function deeply embedded in their genetic code. They, like all their kind, did not need others in order to identify self or relative position within a world hierarchy. They certainly did not require to maintain connection with others in order to do so, because all their kind were the same in that fashion… and they were all connected. They in no way needed physical or temporal proximity to remain so. /More’s the pity./

This one, though, was of a species which could connect only through verbal and physical communication, which meant much miscommunication, the Engineer supposed, and when the physical body was lost, a complete destruction of one entire outlet of communication. Perhaps both. The former could account for a lot of the regret, perhaps, and the latter…

It sounded rather a nice vacation to a creature who had never once enjoyed a moment alone, but taken as a piece, the thought of never once having felt another being’s entirety—of having always felt alone, having always had to guess at another’s motivations, the tentative nature of it all, and the confusion, the seeking— _PLOR_. The thinking one might have found a compatible mind, but being uncertain, and no connection to prove it beyond pheromones and the like? 

The prospect of facing one’s existence with that level of built-in uncertainty and desperate loneliness was far more than the Engineer could cope with. /Perhaps we have the better deal, after all./

Pity stirred somewhere deep inside the empath. The intent had been to pretend not to exist while soothing the emotions enough that this one could return to something like calm rest. To self-negate, to hide, to slip away once the excitations had resolved enough to free them from the coils of need. But…

/I felt the other as well. Perhaps the way to give this one some small surcease would be to make it think the mate was here, briefly. A visitation. Some small reassurance, as if from the subconscious, that all is well, and forgiven./ For, after all, surely it would be. None of those paltry miscommunications and the like would survive after the soul was burned clean and washed by such an immolation. When a soul moved on, such foolishness tended to be shed like a molting, and only the pure certitude remained. Love. Constancy. All that which endured. 

It would be the best way to send this one to her rest, and then the Engineer might depart and find their own. /And I might even be of some use tomorrow in my duties./ 

Besides… this had been something of an avocation for them. The weaving of dreams into art. Not every Morpheus could do it, despite the name. In school, they had been called upon often to entertain others with the skill, whenever there had been breaks in vocational training. 

It had been a long time since they had enjoyed any practice, and perhaps they were rusty, but perhaps it would even be… entertaining to see if they could manage a decent projection.

/Let us see. So. That one had felt… two-natured. Self-effacing on the surface, but roiling with urges beneath. That part buried by self-despite. Sacrificial, utterly devoted. This one is a goddess to that one; the primary in bipedal form. When he looks upon her, she glows as their sun. He must cast himself into her even if it destroys him. It is in no way her fault; what has happened, will happen. She could no more love him than love an insect, because he is beneath her, but she possesses his all. Oh./

Projecting outward, the Engineer drew the form around himself. The physical aspect was easy to create. Physical aspects were as nothing. Voice, timbre, all of it. It came from the female’s memory. Tics around ocular flesh and mandibles, movements of head and limbs… She would see what she wished. He would become that which she recalled, like water flowing down a tunnel. But… The words, the mind, the thoughts…

“Pet. Let it go.”

The female turned in her sleep, toward the projection, saltwater leaking in copious amounts from her ocular cavities and breath hitching. “Spike?” she murmured in disbelief. Her visual apparatus did not engage, but she saw what was projected. And a wave of hope-need-desperation struck; swamped. “You’re here?” And the relief-pain-joy was so strong it nearly drove the visiting being to their projected knees.

“I’m here, luv.” It came out rough. 

The female was sobbing in her sleep, now. “Why? Why would you come? You didn’t believe me…”

The answers came as if programmed; read from the script that had unscrolled within the Engineer’s mind in those last moments in the cavern. “I did. But you had to go. And how could I, anyway? You’re my sun. How could I dare? Buffy…”

“Don’t leave me…”

The quiet pain of that plaint wrenched at the visiting demon. So many had left her, but this? This had been the worst desertion. It had never been expected; not in any incarnation.

“I’ll come back.” The words were out before the Engineer had even realized they were making the promise, and what in the name of PLOR were they _doing?_

“Please…” the female breathed, in a catching way, as if her lungs were stuttering. “I can’t… I can pretend in the daytime, but at night… The night is ours, and it’s been so _empty_.”

And the very vastness of that desolation yawned before her, without end.

They could not but agree. The empathy was too powerful in that moment, her need too great. “I’ll come back. How could I not?” A little sigh. “If I was ever anything, I’m yours.” 

The female hitched another breath, broken and yet somehow amused. A faint expression crossed her sleeping face; an upturning of the mouth while the rest of her features were wetted with saltwater. “Even after I kill you, you won’t leave me. God…” She was starting to drift away; to loose her hold on the dreamstate as relief beckoned. “God… Spike… How did… I ever… deserve…”

And the Engineer was free. The projection faded as the remains of conscious mind dissolved. And the Morpheus demon found themselves awake and horrified in their own resting place, far away and in another time-stream.

Reality came swooping back in. /Damn it all to PLOR. I created an inadvertent empathic link with the poor creature. Only reason I’d be pulled in, and make an oath to return. What in the name of the THEM was I _thinking?_ /

Settling back, though, they knew… some of it was hubris. Yes, empathy had been involved. They had been deeply embroiled in the creature’s pain and need. But, if the Engineer were being frank, they perhaps a bit liked the challenge of using their art, for once. Just this once. 

/I’ve been convincing. Actually convincing, to a member of another species. And it’s helped./ 

It was heady.

And that was dangerous.

/I should not go back. I should resist./

The only problem being, that was likely to be impossible, with the linkage forged in that tunnel, damn it all to PLOR. And once trammeled back in that desperate mind once more… could they resist the urge to soothe once again agonized emotions, when they alone had the power to do so?

/You are a fool./

They would do it again. /What are you _doing?_ /

***

**Simulacrum:**

They worked. They focused solely on their task for the next several circuits, and avoided rest. By some great luck, they did not encounter the female with whom they had created the inadvertent empathic linkage, nor her mate, on whom the linkage had been modeled, still extant in this current timestream. The low-level buzzing of this latter-day sun, dwelling here on the verge of expansion and hidden behind a blanket of UV-cutting, damaged atmospherics, processed great heat even here, beneath the surface, and caused a warmth not unlike that of home. The tunnels were as ovens. The humidity in areas close to the aging aquifer was vast and terrible for a being used to aridity, and the methane and chlorine fumes choking even to the respiration of a being adapted to exceedingly minimal oxygen requirements. The Engineer remained at these greater depths as much as possible, however, performing tasks related to maintaining the deeper system; cleansing the pipes where they were becoming clogged with detritus from the thicker, swampier waters to be found in the aquifer, clearing and replacing screens, that sort of thing.

It kept them away from the near-surface areas. Away from possible contamination with those who dwelt above. 

They remained thus for some circuits. The heat was less, but the humidity was oppressive. The noxious gases caused the Engineer’s carapace to peel in places, eventually, and to soften until they began to sustain injury while performing necessary tasks. And… they required rest.

It was an unfortunate reality.

The Engineer eventually surrendered to necessity, and moved back toward the upper levels, to submit to much-needed sleep.

And was instantly transported. 

The female was leaking salt in her sleep, her emotions a lonely devastation. She reeked of earned judgment fallen as she tossed and turned, without true oblivion. “I… know I… deserve…” she moaned in her dreams, and thrashed. “So sorry, Spike. I’m so... I just wish… Don’t deserve to see you again… You took my place. I’d be in heaven, and now… Can’t stand the thought you’re in hell. You shouldn’t be. Not when…” 

The surge of agony was so vast it came very close to driving the Engineer to the surface beneath their nether limbs. The guilt, the shame embedded within the pain was as nothing. This one feared that she had sacrificed a being who was part of her, and lost that one to a hell-dimension, who had given himself up so that she might return to a heavenly plane. 

How very tragic. Was she not aware that those who self-sacrificed did not travel to hell-dimensions?

Beyond that, was she not aware of how the two-natured functioned? 

The one she had mated was a demon, yes, but his type of demon came from a dimension which bred its own sort, and that was all. Its home-dimension was merely a spawning ground. Thus, upon ceasing, it would not _return_ to the spawning ground. Not after essence-death. There would be no need. /It is not a fish!/ 

And, beyond that, it had committed no great sin on this plane which would require it to travel to some other hell-dimension once it had ceased to inhabit a physical form. It had merely performed acts requisite to its nature, nothing else. From the scan the Engineer had taken of the male in those two brief encounters, yes; it had perhaps done more in one or two moments, but those had been at the instigation of others, or would have been balanced in the scales by other acts. 

At final death, that demon would normally simply phase out of existence, freed from the gessa of the flesh, while the bonded human soul it held captive to give it identity would travel wherever it was then bound, carrying with it all that demon-essence had shared between them. 

But this demon, though, had become fused in essence to a freed human soul. They would thus travel together. /Or/ the Engineer supposed, /perhaps remain in limbo. This one seems bound to the female. Some sort of blood-oath./ In the way of most blood-drinking life-forms, blood-oaths were recorded in the demonic essence. They could not be erased from said essence, but were a part of that essence, beyond physical death. /And, having performed a deed of self-sacrifice, it would be bound to the plane for which it sacrificed, yes? It could travel only to planes which the Powers which ruled that sacrifice saw fit to send it; where the soul to which it is bound saw fit to send that soul./ It was clear, and obvious, and why could not this female see it?

Had she been lied to about the nature of the demonic essence? It would be odd if she had been. She had a demonic essence within her as well, and was as much two-natured as was the one she had loved. What had she thought occurred to her own demonic essence when she had ascended to her first rest? For he saw in her memories that she had done, twice, before some ones precious to her had drawn her back into her physical form. /When you died the first time, little one, your demonic essence retracted back to the others for whom it was reserved. But you returned, and it roared back into you, stronger, because your human soul had experienced a retraction from the concerns of human bodily existence, and it could thus sift more fully into your being. This occurred again, and more fully, in a recent time, so that that essence now pervades every corner of your being. Do you not know that this is why you did not die in the third event, but held on until the sorceress could revive your physical form? The Line which owns you held you here. You are bipartite now, but your essence is bound to this plane./

/His, though…/

The realization was certain. /His is bound to you, little one. He will move on only when you do. You are not reft of him. He has given you his fealty, by his demon’s blood. That essence is pledged to you; to that part of you which is bound to this plane. Thus he cannot move on. He remains, little one; can you not _feel_ it?/

The Engineer understood, finally, why this little one had dreams, repeated ephemera, of the one she thought she had lost. It was because the side of her which was a long line of demonkind, alone and agonized, had been mated, finally, and had thought it had seen that mate fall to dust. But it still felt that mate extant, somewhere in the current dimensional plane… and it was screaming for that one to come back to it and make it whole.

“If I saw you, maybe I could… believe…” the little one was moaning.

Her human side did not understand. And it must needs do so, if she were to seek out the one who was missing, and ensure there would be no time-paradox. She must do this; believe enough to leave behind other concerns, follow her instincts. For that would be how the reality the Engineer had seen above could be. 

They understood it now. This one would go. She would find her mated other. They would fall into this timestream together. And they would be one, here.

Enough, then. /I will do as is needful. Just one last time./

The Engineer donned the simulacrum; slow and painstaking. And when it was perfect, when it looked exactly as the female expected it to look, they closed with her, there in her tormented dreams. “Buffy, love, you need to stop this. Stop bein’ so bloody hard on yourself and realize… I chose this. But I’ll never be far. I’m a soddin’ part of you; haven’t you realized that yet? We’re all bleedin’ wrapped around each other. I’m never gonna leave you. Promised, didn’t I?”

She was racked with some sort of choking breaths in her sleep, the small one; sounded as if she were about to cease autonomic function. She was much-diminished from the power she had carried in the collapsing dimensional portal some time ago; oddly muted by the loss of her mate. And yet, the vast power in her frame belied this loss, for even in her REM period, her hands had the strength, just clenching, to tear through the cloth covering her body. “You _left._ You’re the only one who never leaves, and you left me. I knew you were going. I said… it… anyway… because I knew you were leaving, so why hold back anymore? But you still… left me, and I…”

/How to…/ “I love you, pet. Always will. Never gonna leave you. I’m inside you, and you’re inside me. Can’t you feel me?”

The denial was instantaneous. The weary agony. “I can’t do this without you, Spike. I can’t. I pretend. I pretend all day, but then it’s night, and without you…”

This was the moment. The Engineer fought to find the right emotional hook. Words in this odd language were so very imprecise. “Then don’t. I’m waiting for you, love. Come to me.”

“Oh, God.” The emotions burst out of the small one; so many and so vast it almost knocked the Engineer flat on their back. “A year ago, two years ago, you know how fast I’d’ve taken that excuse to die? But you know I can’t now. I’ve got people depending on me… Dawn…”

/Oh. It thinks…/ “Not tellin’ you to cash in your chips, love. I’m sayin’ I’m waiting. And I’m still with you.”

She was fading out of the dreamstate, no matter how hard she fought to stay with ‘him’. The Engineer’s time was running out. “You can do it, pet. Just put it all down for a mo’, and come.”

“I… What? Spike, I…”

And then she was gone, and the Engineer was falling from the link; wide awake in their sleeping area and staring at the rough ceiling in worried amazement.

That had not gone at all correctly.

***

**Finale:**

Above, the overwarm sun trembled in its every circuit, past a dying planet. Hitched to a lunar body whose orbit had been altered at some time in the past, by the great hubris of a long-dead species, in an attempt to fix some problem long-since laid to rest, they appeared to travel together. Below, the oceans roiled in slow, writhing, thick and muddy coils of motion; heavy with dead and dying life, with pollutants and sediments, overheated by an expanding sun, and no longer properly excited by lunar gravity which was significantly less arousing than it once might have been.

The ground was reddened as with hemoglobin, while all around, the life-forms of this plane sought their final battle for dominion over the dying shreds of a once-populous globe.

Something strode over the crust above, trembling the world with its strides. Its movements were vast on a scale far greater even than the power which the little one had betrayed in their one encounter.

The Engineer cowered, below, in their tunnels. 

The job was becoming difficult to maintain, anyhow. The plumbing of the ancient, degraded city was falling into clogged disrepair, despite all their best efforts. It had not been made to contend with endless silt on the inflow and outlet cycles. And there were thousands of meters of pipe, of screens…

The world shuddered. The clogged screens were shaken loose for them as something primordial and vast passed overhead.

It was of this plane. It did not make the Engineer quail as if they had been stood before PLOR of the THEM… but it was indeed one of Those, and to be given full worship, despite. Nothing else would occasion such a shrug from the very earth. 

This, then, would be the end of this plane, and this task. /Well. I performed adequately, I think, considering the constraints offered./

The Engineer folded themself into their carapace and waited for the end, as the crashing of final battle commenced overhead. There would be an ending soon. It was assured. Once one of the Primordial Powers entered any scene and chose to contend for dominion of a plane, then all else would cease. It was as written. 

Meditation entered into, the Engineer felt a moment of disquiet. /I never solved the issue of the little one. She never believed, never went to the mate. Will there be a paradox?/

They hated to think they would cease, leaving behind such a thing as a paradox. 

Nothing to be done about it now, of course. The task was ended. The Contract had been carefully written in as a one-way trip, and they had signed it as such. There would be no more time to dither over details. The Engineer had escaped home and made a fine job of work out of the opportunity. /One must be grateful for that./

And, they had even had the chance for some Morpheus work on the side. 

How seldom did that sort of serendipity occur? 

/Granted/ they thought as the immense footfalls crescendoed overhead, /the performance was flawed, but when one has done one’s best, one can do little else./

They slipped into meditation. And fell into the mind of a desperate woman thousands of years in the past and a continent away.

She tossed and turned in her sleep, weeping. Weeping for her lost love, sacrificed before he had ever known the truth; that he _had_ been loved. “Please…” she whispered.

He appeared then, before her, and smiled. “I told you, pet. I never left you. I never will. All you have to do is believe, and you can reach out and touch me.”

She couldn’t believe it. “You’re ashes. I saw you burn, from the inside out.”

“Never leave you, Buffy. Wouldn’t know where to begin.”

Her hand reached out, tremulous in pain, in weariness, in lost sleep; scarred with fire. “I can’t…”

“You gotta come, love. The whole bloody city’s about to fall in.” He rolled his tongue behind his teeth and grinned, looking her up and down. “Dunno how much help you’d be, though. Look like you could use some feedin’ up…”

She frowned in her sleep, feeling defensive. “Okay, look, dammit. I’ve been busy. And food’s kinda been the last thing on my mind since you went and burned up on me, asshole.”

“Christ, I love you, Buffy.”

“Oh, God. I love you. Spike? Do you hear me? I _love_ you!”

“I’m waiting for you, pet…”

Reality whirled. A red sun pulsed. 

A rotting city spun on its cratered axis. A trammeled moon burst.

A boiling ocean seethed. Vision kaleidoscoped in on itself. 

Thousands of voices shrieked in dismay. A dimension flipped like a mirror…

Irised to nothing.

The Engineer sighed as they were yanked away, blinked out of existence.

Maybe that would be enough.

***

Buffy sat up shaking in her bed in the new headquarters in Scotland, and wiped the familiar tears from her eyes. “Alright, dammit, that’s _it_. I’m tired of this crap.”

She needed to take a mission. Something energetic. Maybe there was something going on somewhere that could keep her busy enough that she’d be too tired to dream when she fell out, next time.

Forty minutes later she was in a cab, heading for the Paisley airport, a tiny backpack in one hand and a plane ticket for Florence in her back pocket.

* * *  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
I honestly have no idea.   
My brain doesn't consult me about this stuff.   
*shrugs*


End file.
